by Elmer Kelton
Driving to the peargrounds, Charlie watched the sun slowly climb in the east. Through the curtain of dust it was a cold copper ball, and it cast an unnatural sheen upon the surface of the land. Even the hood of the pickup reflected this ghostly glow. Days like this depressed Charlie most of all. He knew with a dreadful certainty that this was going to be another hard winter ... the hardest he had ever seen.
The telephone rang one night about nine o’clock, just as Charlie was preparing to go to bed. The voice was Big Emmett Rodale’s. He sounded angry.
“Charlie, I wish you’d told me what Tom was fixin’ to do.”
Charlie was a little sleepyheaded at first. He stammered something that didn’t quite make sense, for what Big said made no sense either. “What do you mean, what he was fixin’ to do?”
“To leave. I wisht you’d let me know he was fixin’ to leave.”
Charlie was suddenly awake. “He’s gone? Where’d he go?”
“I was hopin’ you’d tell me. You didn’t know about it?”
Charlie shook his head, though there was no way Big could see him; it was his habit to make head and hand gestures when he talked on the telephone, just as he did when he conversed with a man face to face. “I ain’t seen Tom much lately. We ain’t talked.”
“Well, he’s gone, Charlie. Best I can tell, they packed up what stuff was in the house and shipped it to his wife’s home in Dallas. He loaded that girl into the car and that ropin’ horse into the trailer, and he took off to find him a rodeo. He gave me a phone call as he was gassin’ up at the fillin’ station; said he was checkin’ it to me and the FHA to wrestle it out between us the best way we could.”
Charlie just stood there with his shoulder against the wall, the thing running through his mind like some wild and implausible dream. He heard Big saying, “Charlie ... Charlie ... You haven’t hung up on me, have you?” Charlie managed to tell him he was still there. He chewed on the inside of his cheek while he tried to frame a question. “Big, what happened? There must of been somethin’ happened.”
“You know Sam O’Barr’s lease was due. The FHA decided there was no way Tom could afford to pay it, so it canceled his line of credit.”
Charlie said nothing. He just stood there.
Big said, “I expect they were right, Charlie. That lease was way too high.”
“But without land to run on, there wasn’t nothin’ left but to close him out.”
“The handwritin’ on the wall. But he ought to’ve stayed and helped us.”
Charlie turned and looked at Mary. She stood in the door, watching him. She had heard just enough to know something was badly wrong. He said, “Big, what can I do?”
“I don’t know, Charlie, but I wish you’d come in and talk to me soon as you can.”
“I’ll feed in the mornin’. When I’m through I’ll come see you.” He hung up the receiver. He looked at Mary a minute, wondering how to tell her. He made it short.
She accepted it tight-lipped, showing no surprise. “I figured it would happen. I just didn’t know when.”
Charlie blinked. “I didn’t. I had no idea but what he’d stay there same as I would.”
“He’s not the same as you; he never was. I don’t know why it’s been so hard for you to see that. He lives in a different world than you do.”
Sadly he shook his head. “We’re all livin’ in a different world any more. I liked the old one better.”
He went to bed, but he had as well have stayed up. He lay in the darkness with his eyes wide open. He relived again and again the arguments he had had with Tom, listening to Tom’s words in his mind, trying to fathom his son’s thinking. He tried to visualize what he might have done, what he should have said that might have made things different, where he should have yielded and where he should have stood firm.
He lay awhile on his back, then awhile on one side or the other, trying to find a comfortable place and knowing there was none. At length he heard the floor creak, and he saw Mary standing by his bed.
She said, “I could hear you to sing clear in yonder. Can’t you sleep at all?”
“I haven’t yet. I don’t know if I will.”
Mary felt for the covers and crawled in beside him. It surprised him; he couldn’t remember when she had ever come to his bed. It was seldom any more that he ever went to hers. She laid her arm across him. “It’ll be all right, Charlie. We’ve had troubles before and everything always turned out all right.”
She kissed him on the forehead. He lay a moment, wondering, then he reached for her as he used to do a long time ago.
He was up before daylight, his mind a little foggy from missing sleep. He fed the sheep, then drove up the dim road that wound to the top of Warrior Hill. The wind was raw, so he didn’t stand out in it. He sat in the pickup, staring through the windshield for an hour across his own land to that which belonged to Sam O’Barr. From here he could not see the fence, but he could easily tell where the fenceline was. If his own place looked bad, the O’Barr country looked far worse. He pondered what he could say to Big Emmett, what proposition he might be able to make that he could get the banker to accept. He thought about Tom’s sheep and cattle, and the fact that if Tom was gone there was no one to feed them. They would be standing around the feeding grounds bleating and bawling.
He looked at the cairn of rocks where August Schmidt had buried that Indian eighty years ago. He said, “Old Warrior, I’m in trouble.”
He ate dinner early and drove into town. Big was at his accustomed place, hunched over the old roll-top desk. The only thing that had changed in thirty years was that Big had gotten older and fatter. And lately he seemed to have gotten sadder. Charlie did not stop to weigh himself on the free scale; he walked straight to Big’s desk. Neither man spoke. Big arose, and they gravely shook hands. Charlie sat down in the straight, hard chair and waited for Big to say something. Big seemed to be waiting on Charlie.
Charlie said, “Big, I’m sorry.”
Rodale shrugged. “Feel sorry for Tom, not for us. This ain’t the first time it’s ever happened to us. It ain’t even the first time it’s happened to us lately.’.’
“One way or another I’ll see you don’t lose nothin’. If the stock don’t pay out what’s owed, I’ll do it.”
“With what?”
“With time. Looks like that’s all I got any more, is time.”
Rodale gloomily shook his bald head. “It may take more time than any of us have got left to bail us out of the trouble we’re in. Not just Tom’s outfit ... all of them.”
Charlie said, “I been thinkin’, Big. I could take that O’Barr place back. Somehow or other I could manage, and if I’m lucky I might bail us out.”
Rodale stared thoughtfully from behind half-closed lids. “That was the first thought that came to me. Then I got to thinkin’ a little deeper.” He leaned forward, closer to Charlie. “You taken a good look at yourself in the mirror lately?”
Charlie stared back. “You thinkin’ I’m too old?”
“You’ll never see sixty again, that’s for damn sure.”
“Don’t sell me short. I can still do more work than most young men.”
“Not as much as you think you can. You’re already overburdened. Double the job and you’d be dead before spring. Anyway, the FHA was right about the O’Barr land. Bad as I hate to give credit to the federales, there’s some of them pretty good with a calculator. There’s no way a man could pay Suds’s price and live with it.”
Charlie tried to think of an argument. From outside, on a livestock truck passing through town, he could hear the bleating of sheep. That reminded him. “Them stock of Tom‘s, they’ll need feedin’.”
“I already sent a man out. Felipe Gonzales is a good hand, and he’s been out of a job since the Hatcher ranch folded. He’ll stay and feed till we can round up and sell the stock.”
Charlie nodded, relieved on at least that one point. He rubbed his knuckles where the rheumatism was bothering him m
ore of late. “I sure hate to see that land go. I had it a long time.”
“You’ll be better off without it. Let go, Charlie. Be content with what you can do and don’t fret yourself over what you can’t.”
Charlie argued a little more but to no avail. He would get nowhere wrangling with Big. He stared blankly at the floor, a kind of grief washing over him as he tried to reconcile himself to the loss of the land, and to the fact that he would probably never have it again. He stood up to go but had one more thing that needed saying. He cleared his throat. “Remember what I told you. If you come up short on Tom’s debts, don’t write them off. However long it takes, I’ll pay you.”
Rodale frowned. “You and the buffalo ...”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re a relic of another age. Get out of here, Charlie, before they decide to stuff you and put you in a glass case.”
Charlie paid little attention to the young man in the gray suit who got up from the waiting bench and followed him out the door. He heard someone call, “Mister Flagg,” on the street and turned to look. He saw the young man hurrying to catch up, dropping a pad from his hand and stopping to pick it up, almost losing some pages that tore free in the wind.
“Mister Flagg,” the young man said, a little out of breath, “my name is Johnson. I’d like to talk to you if you can spare a few minutes.”
Charlie sized him up warily, fairly sure he had never seen him before. “I’m not in the market for anything,” he said by way of caution.
“I’m not selling anything. I’m with the Associated Press, out of the Dallas bureau office.”
Charlie nodded neutrally, not sure whether this was good or bad.
“I’m doing a series of stories on the effects of the drouth.”
“You come to the right place at Rio Seco.”
“I’d like to buy you a cup of coffee and talk a little.”
Charlie saw no way any harm could come of it. It might be a good idea if more people realized what was going on here. He nodded and pointed his chin toward the coffee shop. “Girl named Bess Winfield takes care of that place. She makes about as good a cup of coffee as you’ll find in a cafe, which ain’t sayin’ too much.”
He pushed on the door but found it locked. He tried again before he was satisfied. He saw a sign in the front window: CLOSED. Peering through the glass, he saw that the floor was bare; all the tables and chairs had been removed, and all the equipment along the walls. The building had turned into a shell, like so many others. It took him so by surprise that he couldn’t absorb the truth for a minute.
“I don’t get to town much,” he said finally. “I didn’t know it had gone out of business. But I oughtn’t to be surprised. We’ve lost over half the stores and shops in town since this drouth started. Anybody who thinks he can prosper when the farmer and rancher don’t, all he’s got to do is come look at this town. And you can write that in your story.”
It bothered Charlie, finding out like this. Bess Winfield had probably left town.
The reporter asked, “If it started raining tomorrow, how long would it take the town to recover?”
Charlie frowned at the vacant buildings across the street. Sadly he said, “Did you ever see anything die and then come back to life?”
The only place he could think of which they could handily reach afoot was Prentice Harpe’s drugstore; it had started serving coffee the last couple of years ... anything to help the store traffic. Prentice was standing at the cash register when Charlie walked in. He gave the ranchman a cold glance and turned his back. He hadn’t spoken to Charlie since the collapse of the cattleman’s caravan. He had sold out all his cattle shortly afterward and lost twenty years’ savings. From what Charlie had heard, he was holding onto this drugstore by his toenails.
Charlie motioned toward a table, and Johnson sat down opposite him, laying out the note pad. The waitress who brought them coffee was vaguely familiar, though Charlie could not remember her name. He recognized her as the wife of a farmer out on Coyote Flat. A working wife was the only salvation now to many a small operator.
Johnson queried Charlie about the beginnings of the drouth, and its effect on him.
“Six years,” Charlie said, counting on his fingers. “It’s a blessin’ the Lord never gave us the gift of prophecy. If we’d known when we started that we’d still be in it six years later, I think we’d of all gone and jumped into the Concho River. I get to thinkin’ sometimes that maybe drouth is the normal condition here and the rainy years are the freaks.”
“I suppose there have been drouths this long before.”
“In Indian times, maybe; not since the white man has kept records. The Indian would take down his tepee and leave with the buffalo. It always rained somewhere; that’s where he would go. We can’t do that. Anywhere we went, somebody else would have a prior claim.”
“What has been the drouth’s effect on you?”
“It’s aged me twenty years in the last six. It’s cut me down to half the land I had to begin with. I had three sections of my own, deeded free and clear. Now there’s mortgage paper on it again. I sold out all my cattle and I’m down to a fraction on my sheep. Once I had a son on the place with me, and a whole Mexican family. Now it’s just me and my wife.”
The reporter nodded sympathetically. “I was told about your son. He would make a good human-interest story, being so well-known in rodeo. People will know it must have been severe to force out a man of his qualifications.”
Charlie looked down at his hands. “Anything you write about Tom, you tell them he tried awful hard.”
“Perhaps he’ll do well enough back in rodeo that someday he can get a fresh beginning on the ranch.”
Charlie avoided Johnson’s eyes. “Maybeso.”
The reporter signaled the waitress to refill their coffee cups and asked Charlie if he would like some pie or something. Charlie shook his head. Because of the weight he had lost lately, Mary had quit pushing those damn turnip greens at him. He wanted to keep it that way.
Johnson said, “Perhaps what this part of the country needs is a good oilfield. That would pay off a lot of debts.”
Charlie nodded dubiously. “Maybe, but you pay a price for it. An oilfield scars up the land. And them oil people, they don’t care much about the land, most of them. They’re only interested in what’s under it. They’ll use up your water or leave it polluted with salt if you don’t watch them. There’ll come a time in this country when a barrel of water is worth more than a barrel of oil.”
“It appears to me the land is badly scarred-up anyway. Even with the best of rain, it may take years for it to recover from what has happened to it.”
“We’ve done the best we knew how, most of us. Nobody goes in there on purpose to do damage to his country. We’ve grazed it too hard—we’ve made mistakes—but it wasn’t because we meant to. It was because we didn’t know enough. We had to guess sometimes, and we guessed wrong. We had to take chances sometimes, and we taken the wrong ones. But we’ve tried to do right. We will do right when we know how.”
Johnson jotted some notes and turned a page. “Somebody was telling me you’re unusual, Mister Flagg.”
“Unusual?”
“They tell me you’ve gone this far through the drouth and have never taken emergency feed or gone in for any of the other government aid programs.”
Charlie shrugged. “I expect there’s others have done the same.”
“I suppose. But it would interest me to know your motivations. I’ve always heard about the fierce independence of the pioneer cowman. Is this a latter-day manifestation of the same credo?”
Charlie blinked, some of the words going over his head. “I just don’t believe in askin’ somebody else to pay my way. I’ll play my own cards or cash in my chips.”
“But modern-day morality places no stigma on accepting assistance. It’s the norm today; it’s neighbor helping neighbor.”
“And sometimes it’s neighbor soa
kin’ neighbor.”
Johnson was writing rapidly.
Charlie said, “I’ll give you an illustration. If you was to go out to my ranch and look around my barn, you’d find a bunch of cats. Feed barns and haystacks are bad about breedin’ mice if you don’t have cats to keep them thinned out. Now, if you’d go in my wife’s kitchen you’d see an old pet cat curled up close to the stove. She’s fat and lazy. If a mouse was to run across the kitchen floor that old cat wouldn’t hardly stir a whisker. She’s been fed everything she wanted. She depends on us. If we went off someday and left her she’d starve.
“But out at the barn there’s cats that can spot a mouse across two corrals. I never feed them. They rustle for theirselves, and they do a damn good job of it. If I was to leave they’d never miss me. All they need is a chance to operate. They may not be as fat as the old pet, but I’d say they’re healthier. And they don’t have to rub somebody’s leg for what they get. Now, you can call me old-fashioned if you want to—lots of people do—but I’d rather be classed with them go-getters out in the barn than with that old gravy-licker in the kitchen.”
Johnson scribbled furiously, getting it all on paper. Presently he looked up. “A lot of honest people have taken drouth help and been glad to get it, Mister Flagg.”
“I know. I got a-plenty of friends who’ve taken all they could get and were honest in figurin’ they had it comin’ to them. They’ve paid taxes for years and seen other people take the benefits. Now at least they’re gettin’ a little of it back. That’s the whole point, though, that’s what’s wrong. There was a time when we looked up to Uncle Sam; he was somethin’ to be proud of and respect. Now he’s turned into some kind of muddle-brained Sugar Daddy givin’ out goodies right and left in the hopes that everybody’s goin’ to love him. And people are playin’ a selfish game with him, all tryin’ to grab more than the next man, tryin’ to get more out of the pot than they put in it. Let the other man pay. Gore the other man’s ox but leave mine alone.
